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01-22-2010, 06:43 AM
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JonathanEntertainment JonathanEntertainment is offline
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New Chat Bar Software to be released Feb 5th.... "Arrow Chat"

ArrowChat is a jQuery based chat software that uses PHP and mySQL. It is placed at the bottom of your website similar to Facebook Chat. The script is fully customizable from within the administration panel. Customers of ArrowChat are also able to buy or sell modifications, themes, and plugins for the software from our built-in store.

To see more details or features on this Facebook style chat bar software check here: http://www.arrowchat.com/index.php?do=features

-- merged --

Another Facebook Style Chat Bar - "CometChat"

Cross-browser compatible

CometChat works with all modern browsers including Internet Explorer 6+, Mozilla Firefox 1.5+, Safari, Opera 9+. Requires no browser plugins like Java™ or Adobe Flash Player™.CometChat does not require any special servers. It works on regular servers as well as shared hosts. No need to manage your own server.CometChat uses industry standard PHP and mySQL for communication. No extra server side modules required.CometChat's new plugin architecture enables you to create and expand functionality of CometChat. Your CometChat packages comes with 5 pre-loaded plugins.

You can check them out at: http://www.cometchat.com

Current Version : 1.5
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Someday, 12:01 PM
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  #2  
01-25-2010, 12:07 AM
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Cometchat is pretty crappy. I've seen it cause high loads on servers, cause PHP violations, fail to load on all pages (on vBulletin embeds), repeatedly pop-up finished conversations, and just overall be a nuisance. It also has a direct problem co-existing with woopra stats, in some test installs I've seen. It's just coded poorly. I'm afraid the developer is in over his head.

There is also a lot of censorship and post editing at the support forum. It's a one-man show, and he's pissing off a lot of buyers. I get the feeling the programmer is a high school or college kid in India.

Cometchat should have been released open-source. It still should be. There's just too much wrong with it.

Sadly, there seems to be better support from the hacker site vb-team.info than cometchat.com. How does that work?

I'm hoping Arrowchat works better. But again, the price being requested is a bit ridiculous, being a plugin-style product for forums. Yeah, I know, "it has a standalone version too" --- blah blah blah -- we all know this is going to actually be used in plugin form. Almost nobody will buy/use the standalone product.

I've seen a lot of scripts/programs die on the vine, and arrowchat and cometchat are both following that model and timeline. (Remember that abandoned forum I showed in another post, the one with all the porn spam?)

I won't be buying either one.

The inclusion of chat on a message board is also questioned. I've too often seen it become a short-lived fad, used heavily when introduced but dead within a year. The benefit of a message board is that conversations are saved, archived, and indexed by search engines. Sites grow from it, and information is shared with others. Chat is lost within hours, and only the few chatters get benefit of the conversation. Chat is very "un-internet" to be honest, contrary to the comm theory of the web.

If nothing else, I don't like being that available to people. Having chat is almost as bad as listing your phone number by your username.

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  #3  
02-17-2010, 08:43 AM
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kpmedia kpmedia is offline
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It's halfway through February now, and nothing's changed.

Cometchat is still stuck in buggy v1.5, beta-grade at best, ill-fit for live site use of any kind.

Arrowchat is still in pre-order. So much for Feb 5th launch. Then it was the 19th, now bumped to 26th. What's next mid-March?

I have a feeling neither of these programs are going to ever fully exist as the devs (and buyers) will want.

It just doesn't look good to me, and I won't be buying either one of them until the tech is more sound -- and actually available for site testing and production usage.

JE, are you still using it for your live site, or are you also running into
  • speed issues (minute-long chat delays),
  • ghosts (person logged into chat, but not actually on site),
  • non-logins (person on forum, not chat),
  • "initializing" loops (non-loading script),
  • or any server resource issues (running high CPU/RAM -- assuming you have dedicated or VPS where you can/must monitor such things?)
  • --- or worse, threats from a shared host that you've "abused" your resources?

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  #4  
02-17-2010, 09:23 AM
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JonathanEntertainment JonathanEntertainment is offline
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speed issues (minute-long chat delays),

(never had a speed issue to be honest) I have ran tests on that with a test member setup)

ghosts (person logged into chat, but not actually on site),

Never had this issue... Do you mean were there not showing up on the who's online but shows up in the chat listing? I have but when I chat that person seems they are indeed there as they answer the chat... not sure what this is about havent brought it up to the coders..

non-logins (person on forum, not chat),

Never had this issue at all.

"initializing" loops (non-loading script),

Nope didnt have this one... I believe there was a fix for this on a site...someone was having that issue.

or any server resource issues (running high CPU/RAM -- assuming you have dedicated or VPS where you can/must monitor such things?)
--- or worse, threats from a shared host that you've "abused" your resources?


No I havent actually had any reports on it...resources were fine the few times I looked at it. I use powweb. They have resource monitors but if i want to know more there tech support usually tells me..

Yea I am getting kind of worried myself with the constant push back of the dates for arrowchat. The only issue I am having with cometchat right now is there new games plug-in which allows members to play games against each other that they are chatting to... seems its a session issue though with my host.

-- merged --

This is one post recommend "source vbteam"

However, I was able to fix Cometchat for Photopost, vbadvanced cmps, and vbadvanced Links Directory or any other add-on that installs to a sub-folder because it is best to hard code your url path right to the cometchat folder as such:

var h="http://www.yourdomain.com/cometchat/";

Now my cometchat no longer displays "initializing" in any installed add-on for vbulletin such as photopost pro gallery or vbadvanced links directory, etc...

The reason it will say "Initializing" is because these add-ons get installed in their own sub-folder such as "gallery" or "links", etc. By hard coding the url path to the cometchat directory on your server the problem is solved because if your in a sub-folder on your server accessing another index.php your cometchat installation will not know where to find itself.

Edit however this was recommended for Version 1.1... not sure on v1.5.

Usually if I have a problem I just submit a Support ticket and they will either tell me what to do or correct it. I havent had many issues with v1.5. Most of my issues were due to the mods that I did to the software.
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  #5  
02-17-2010, 10:02 AM
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I find it sad that the best support for cometchat is coming from the vB hacker site vbteam.info -- people who don't pay for the product get better support from the underground community than the official site and official support docs/forums.

I think the original dev should just throw in the towel, and post it as a freebie on vbulletin.org where open support could make it work better in the long-term. The dev just seems to be in over his head -- and I bet arrowchat is slowly coming to the same realization.

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  #6  
02-17-2010, 03:18 PM
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Yea there are times were I see alot of complaints about it but for now I have been able to manage the software so until it causes my community issues then I probably deal for now.. as they love the thing. I am not sure what to think about ArrowChat so far as it keeps getting pushed back at this rate I will probably ask for a refund till it is released even though I got it at a cheaper price not sure if the software will be like cometchat were unless its underground copy will only work on one domain.. but it will go on a test enviroment till I see it works ok and not alot of issues.
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  #7  
08-09-2010, 08:42 PM
april198474 april198474 is offline
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I know another live chat software offered by Comm100, you may also take a look at.
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  #8  
10-01-2010, 02:16 AM
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I looked at CometChat and Arrowchat again today. Still nothing new.
  • Arrowchat is still in a buggy beta.
  • Cometchat still has complaints about quality of support and usability issues.
  • Hacker forums like vbteam.info appear to have more quality info on install issues than the official site or even vb.org.
I've more or less given up on Facebook-style chat systems.
I won't be using meebo, since it's full of ads that don't benefit my sites in any way. Forget that.
I'm not paying for beta-quality software at $50-65 apiece either. That's ridiculous.

Thought this was worth another update.

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  #9  
10-29-2010, 11:47 PM
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Its been a little... I no longer use CometChat even though I have a liscence and they have a 2.0 version out that I havent looked at in a little. I still have the mods for it an what not. I currently use ArrowChat which is fixing to release 1.0 version. The latest build incorporate Video Chat and Chatrooms added to there bar system. I havent had any issues with it setup on my Vbulletin 4.0. The chat software does run on a subdomain rather than dealing with my main domain. I havent had a chance to test the Video chat to be honest but compared to the Cometchat which charges a fortune for it this one is free with the software.

I will post some more in depth soon..
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  #10  
11-01-2010, 10:54 PM
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Feel free to post your URL, traffic stats, bandwidth/resource consumption, etc.

That's really been one of the big issues with both Arrowchat and Cometchat -- the hogging of server (or VPS) resources, be it RAM and/or CPU. And it would get worse as traffic ramped up, and there were more concurrent users online on the site, using it (or even logged in but not using it).

Arrowchat does have, and has always had, better potential than Cometchat. But we're going on more than a year of this tech existing with minimal gains in how well it works.

I'd LOVE to put it on a couple of sites, but I'm afraid it would just cripple the server, as well as be plagued by ghost logins as it was during a number of trial runs last year and early this year.

There's also the question of how much chat steals away from posts -- the reason for the forum, and the SEO consequences of "wasted text" from chat sessions vs forum posts.

Can't say I see the need for video-based chatting.

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  #11  
11-04-2010, 06:10 PM
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Great that I have found this thread.

Users of my website want a facebook style chat/messaging system.
I have found Arrowchat, Cometchat and Ajaxim. Ajaxim is for free but very simple, and documentation doesn't say anything about integration in existing website. I even didn't try to install it.

I can't decide between Arrowchat and Cometchat.

The most important thing for me are server load issues. I have a dedicated server and the load is 0.1... 0.3... 0.5 with about 500 people online at peak times. I also have a private mesagging system something like in this forum. Server load is fine so far and I don't to buy and install a script which causes server load like 3.0... 5.0 10.00 and higher.

Some time ago I purchased Socketmail Little. It was very buggy - even non-English characters in emails was a problem for that script. Now I don't want to purchase one more script which will be not useful.

JonathanEntertainment, why you no longer use Cometchat? Why did you switch to Arrowchat? Just because Cometchat addons are expensive? Did you have any server performance issues with this chat?

Have many people usually are online in your chat? A high number?

Thanks.
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  #12  
04-12-2017, 02:50 AM
Gaja Gaja is offline
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I have bought this ArrowChat it is working very fine and it is nice chat however there is very increased CPU usage when you have more then 20 users on chat. So beware before you buy this chat, if you have more users on your site you can not use this chat plugin. I have 200 users on site and after two weeks of testing we found and also ArrowChat support admit that it is impossible to use ArrowChat with so many users (more than 100) even on good dedicated server !!!!!!!!!
And also they do not want to return me the money....
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  #13  
04-18-2017, 10:37 PM
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Hi Gaja,

CometChat is as efficient as any self-hosted solution can be. On most shared-server plans, CometChat will work smoothly for hundreds of users. If server load becomes an issue, you can easily add our CometService to your installation and the load will reduce instantly. Our CometService has been tested with over 100,000 simultaneous chatters.

Also we can propose a demo to you to experience CometChat features and functionalities.

Regards,

Mike
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